National-Level Data
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Summary
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance (YRBS) System were used to examine school safety experiences of U.S. high school students. For more information, please see the Data Information tab. Despite other school safety indicators decreasing (weapon carrying and physical fights) or remaining the same (experiencing weapon violence or threats), the proportion of students who skipped school due to safety concerns more than doubled from 1993 to 2019. Students of non-majority sexual identities and race/ethnicities were substantially more likely to report skipping school due to safety concerns in 2019.
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Longitudinal Trends (1993-2019)
Who Has Saftey Concerns? (2019)
State-Level Data
## Column 1
Safety Concerns
Physical Fights
Weapon Carrying
Weapon Violence
## Column 2
Bivariate Correlation Between State-level Data
Data Information
YRBS Survey Data
The Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance (YRBS) System is comprised of biannual surveys by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that monitor health, social, and environmental risk factors of middle and high school students in the United States. This systems includes: (1) a national school-based survey conducted by the CDC and state, territorial, tribal entities; and (2) local surveys conducted by state, territorial, and local education and health agencies and tribal governments.
This project used two different versions of the YRBS Combined High School Datasets: (1) National surveys conducted in high schools between 1993 and 2019; (2) 2019 data from high school students collected by the state/district health or education agencies. The first allowed for trend analysis of weighted, nationally-representative data, whereas the latter allowed for analysis of the most recent weighted state-level data. Both datasets along with documentation of the questions and sampling processes can be found here.
Although national data is available for 1991, school safety questions were not asked until 1993; as such, 1993 is the earliest timepoint available in national for the questions of interest. Additionally, state-level data availability vary by questions as states may choose to not ask certain survey questions or make the data publicly available. For example, 2019 data from Alaska on safety concerns, physical fighting, and weapon carrying are available but not for weapon violence.
Giffords Law Center
Data from Giffords Law Center’s 2019 Annual Gun Law Scorecard were also used. Each state is graded on their gun legislation and ranked from 1 (strongest) to weakest (50).
Longitudinal Trends
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Summary of Changes
My original and updated visualizations of national-level school safety trends are similar, but I made a couple changes based on feedback from peers and the instructor. First, I made the updated version interactive so that, when you hover over it, you can see more precise information (i.e., specific year and percentages for each safety indicator). I believe that this change will allow the audience to get a better understanding of the longitudinal trends in the data (particularly people who may struggle with axes). Second, I made the facet labels larger and wrapped the text on them so that the font size would be larger and thus easier to read, which will make it more reader-friendly for the audience.
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Original Version
Updated Version
Safety Concerns Demographics
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Summary
I made a few changes to this visualization based on peer and instructor feedback. My original version relied upon the audience understanding that demographic groups went part of the same demographic category based on the color of their dots, but I used a facet grid for my updated version so that it clearly groups and labels the categories to which the groups belong. I also made the updated version interactive so that you can see the percentages for each group when you hover over their respective dots. Last, I ordered the demographic categories so that sexual identity would be at the top of the plot because that category contained the groups with the highest proportion of safety concerns. Overall, I think that these changes make the visualization much clearer for the audience.
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Original Version
